Expedia

I have been a travel agent for more than 40 years, and the last eight have been the roughest. It is encouraging to read articles like "In the Era of the Web Search, Whither the Travel Agency?" (Travel Insider, May 11) and learn that there are travelers out there who view us as professionals. With the birth of Travelocity, Expedia and the like, many are convinced that anyone can be a travel consultant. But from being in the trenches for four decades, I can tell you there is more to the job than booking $120 tickets.

Six journeys to Libya After a five-year hiatus, Travcoa, a tour operator based in El Segundo that specializes in personalized luxury trips, will return to Libya in September with six journeys. For years the company has kept a wait list of clients eager to see the North African country, spokesman Perry Lungmus said. Each 13-day trip, titled "Libya: The Forbidden Sahara," is limited to 18 participants. Prices start at $6,995 per person, based on double occupancy. The itinerary takes travelers from Tripoli to the ancient Greek and Roman ruins of Sabratha, Apollonia and Leptis Magna.

Those who hesitated might have lost out on bargain New Year's Eve hotel rooms in New York City and San Francisco, but how much you pay also might depend on where you want to stay. NewYorkHotels.org reports prices in Big Apple hotels are way up for Dec. 31 compared with regular rates. The survey shows rooms at Hotel 91 on the Lower East Side jump from $125 to $933, and the Cosmopolitan in the Wall Street area increases from $129 to $549. Even the midtown Holiday Inn NYC's rates jump from $179 to $649.

FORT WORTH — With pointy red gnome hats, a cruise giveaway and plenty of balloons, Travelocity turned sweet 16 last month. But it hasn't been all cupcakes and champagne for the travel website. Once considered a trailblazer, Travelocity has struggled for the last few years to keep up with competitors such as Expedia and Priceline. "We weren't moving as fast as we needed to," Chief Executive Carl Sparks said about newer, nimbler competitors. "We're 16 and so sometimes we think of ourselves as one of the elderly companies in the space because we were around since its inception.… Yet 16 is quite young for a multibillion-dollar company.

Scrape the bugs off your windshield and check your radiator coolant because the next few months are stacking up to be one of the top summers for road trips in years. With consumer confidence up, fuel prices down and frustration over airline fees growing, Americans are expected to hit the road in big numbers over the next few months, rolling to such hot spots as Las Vegas, the Grand Canyon and Lake Tahoe. Travel experts and surveys conducted in the last few weeks point to a season of busy freeways and crowded roadside attractions.

Expedia Inc. said it will report its first quarterly operating profit for the period just ended, more than a year ahead of schedule, as the Internet travel industry continues to grow at a healthy clip. Expedia, which is 70% owned by software giant Microsoft Corp., said it will report earnings before noncash items of about $4 million, or 9 cents a share, for its fiscal third quarter ended March 31.

The cost of raising money in the junk bond market continued to surge Monday, spurring online travel firm Expedia Inc. to sharply scale back plans to borrow money to buy back stock. Also Monday, Allison Transmission, a General Motors Corp. unit that makes automatic transmissions for trucks and buses, postponed a sale of $3.5 billion of loans, said Leveraged Commentary & Data, a Standard & Poor's publication. The loans would have helped pay for the unit's $5.

IAC/InterActiveCorp, billionaire Barry Diller's Internet company, will give $250 million in cash to its Expedia unit to provide it with capital when it is spun off as a public company. Expedia, which will consist of travel businesses Hotels.com, Hotwire, Expedia.com and other websites, will have a revolving credit line of $500 million at the time of the spinoff, New York-based IAC said in a filing Monday with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Diller on Dec.

Hotwire, the airlines' Internet site that pioneered so-called "unpublished" discounted fares when it launched last fall, has inspired an apparent copycat: "Bargain Fares" at Expedia. The giant Internet travel marketer, at http://www.expedia.com, is offering low fares not available on computerized reservations systems used by travel agents and Internet search engines.

Expedia Inc. posted its first quarterly operating profit a year ahead of plan, and said earnings for the current quarter and next fiscal year would top Wall Street expectations as the online travel service drew more customers. For its current fourth quarter, ending June 30, Expedia said it expected to post a profit, before items, of 6 cents to 9 cents per share, compared with a loss of 30 cents a year earlier.